Enactive approaches in cognitive science propose that perception, and more generally cognitive experience, are strongly mediated by embodied (sensory-motor) processes, and that our primary experience of the world is action-oriented or pragmatic (Noë 2004; Thompson 2007; Varela et al. 1991). Extended mind theorists propose that cognition supervenes on embodied and environmental processes such as...

This version of the paper was submitted to the journal Metaphilosophy as part of a special issue dealing with the philosophy of the Web. The definitive version of the paper will be made available at Abstract The rapid growth and penetration of the Web raises important questions about its effects, not just on our social activities, but also on the nature of our cognitive and epistemic profiles. ...

Clark and Chalmers (1998) introduced the extended mind hypothesis, according to which some mental states can be realized by non-biological external resources. A lively debate has flourished around this hypothesis, connected with the issues of embodiment, embeddedness, situatedness and enaction (cf. Clark, 2008; Menary, 2010; Shapiro, 2011). Two of the main criticisms addressed to the functional...

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In thi...

Clark and Chalmers (1998) defend the hypothesis of an ‘Extended Mind’, maintaining that beliefs and other paradigmatic mental states can be implemented outside the central nervous system or body. Aspects of the problem of ‘language acquisition’ are considered in the light of the extended mind hypothesis. Rather than ‘language’ as typically understood, the object of study is something called ‘ut...

Theories of embodied cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear how to understand them. We offer several interpretations of embodiment, the most interesting being the thesis that mental representations in bodily formats (B-formats) have an important role in cognition. Potential B-formats include motoric, somatosensory, affective and interoceptive formats. The literature on mirr...

We argue that the significance of the spatial boundary in autopoiesis has been overstated. It has the important task of distinguishing a living system as a unity in space but should not be seen as playing the additional role of delimiting the processes that make up the autopoietic system. We demonstrate the relevance of this to a current debate about the compatibility of the extended mind hypot...

The emotion-cognition integration in Mather et al. can be extended by specifying the relationship between competition and arousal in the reverse direction. According to affective monitoring, competition raises arousal, which, when sustained, results in negative affect, evoking theta oscillations, and when resolved, in positive affect, evoking gamma oscillations. Competition should be considered...

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. In our previous work, we have argued that this view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, promises conc...

Recently, there has been a growing interest in topics at the intersection of epistemology and externalist philosophy of mind in the form of active externalism. Active externalism, contrary to Putnam and Burge’s content (or passive) externalism, concerns the aspects of the environment that determine the content and the flow of cognition, not by acting as the background which cognition takes plac...